Desert Rose
by Aria6
Summary: A short story about Marluxia's origins. One shot. Rated for adult concepts.


I am writing this because I will forget soon. Namine did this to me… we don't understand how, either of us, and it doesn't really matter. She regrets the pain she has caused me and I regret asking. But for now, I remember and I want someone else to remember. Even if it's only Namine with this piece of paper stored in her room.

My real name doesn't matter. The meaning of it, though, does matter. As a baby I was taken to the shamans, as all children are, and if the shamans saw something in my future they would give me a name. If not, I would be named after my parents.

The shamans saw my future and named me. Our names are written in symbols that carry multiple meanings, and mine could be translated as desert flower, thoughtful flower or copper flower. Although the last means more to my people than it would to you… my people worked no other metal but copper, so we used it to make all our weapons. Steel flower might convey the essence of it more, or weapon flower.

I was all of that. The shamans looked into my future and saw that I would be a great warrior and leader of my people. The greatest shaman of my people, who always saw true, also saw something that troubled him. But of that he would not speak.

I grew up happily in the middle of the Irinca desert. So why was I named after flowers? Flowers do grow in the desert. At the centre of my people's land was the Oasis of Plenty that had sustained us for generations. A great well of water, it was the great garden of the desert. Glorious flowers grew there year round, and my hair was the same pink as many of the blooms.

I loved the desert as much as I did the oasis. My people had never allowed the soft living of the oasis to blunt our edge, and the desert was a harsh mistress. I learned to live there without complaint and to love the harshness of it, the hot and cold beauty of the sands. In my younger years I traveled often, learning of other tribes from my elders. Everything I would need to know when I became the leader of my people.

By the time I was thirty I had three wives, five children and numerous lovers of the same sex. This might sound odd to you, and our ways were disdained by many other tribes, but it is how we had always done things. It was not permitted to touch another man's wives, or respectable young women, but love between the men was encouraged and expected. After all, who would want to look weak to a lover? We were all fierce warriors.

Disaster came only a year later. One night we looked up and saw the shooting stars crossing the heavens, and wondered what it meant. The shamans looked to the light and darkness for the clues to the future, and could only say that evil was coming. That the shower of the stars had been the sign of a loss of a great defense, like the eroding of a bulwark against the great sandstorms.

The great shaman had been old when I was a child, and he was truly ancient then. He had become a recluse. I went to him to beg the gift of his true sight, but he would only shake his head and tell me that the future would be what it would be. When I finally turned to go, defeated, he said good-bye.

I cannot express the doom he packed into those two brief words.

The next day more of my people went to petition the shaman, but they found he had died in his sleep. But not peacefully… he had struggled as if against an unseen attacker, and the horror on his face terrified those who found him. My people began to whisper of terrible omens and I began preparing defenses, driving our warriors hard to prepare them. For what, I did not know, but the warriors did not complain. I even set up evacuation plans, in case we needed to abandon the oasis. For generations that would have been unthinkable, but I was afraid.

I was right to be afraid. A fortnight later the sky darkened, and the air seemed to crackle. Dark creatures began assailing us, but my warriors stood bright and strong against them. The shamans called on the land, the light and the darkness to withstand. But we were tiring, and there seemed no end to the supply of the monsters. And every warrior that fell vanished, becoming another dark creature. I know now that they were Heartless.

Suddenly the Heartless drew back, and a man was walking towards us. If I had not known better, I would have thought him a shaman. Among my people, most shamans learned only of the light and the elements, or the elements alone. But the greatest shamans learned of the darkness as well, embracing it without being consumed. A few of them were granted visible signs of their knowledge, light hair, tanned skin and yellow eyes. The old shaman had been one so gifted.

This man looked the part of a great shaman, but I immediately sensed he was not. A great shaman would wear the light as deeply as the darkness, and this man oozed only dark. I shivered to myself as I watched him walk closer. There had always been tales, that if a shaman who was unworthy looked into the dark he could be consumed by it yet retain part of himself in a mockery of what he had been. I had not believed that until this moment.

"Foolish children," the man said with a smile. "You struggle against the darkness without even knowing why. There is so much to learn." My mouth went dry as I realized he was insane. One of the bowmen aimed at him, then screamed as the bowstring snapped and lashed him across the face. Friends ran to help but I ignored it, focusing my attention on the stranger.

"I do not know what you speak of, stranger. Meet me in single combat and if you lose, depart here forever!" A few of my soldiers raised a cheer, but most followed the lead of the shamans and watched in grim silence. I was grateful for that. My challenge had been born of desperate bravado and the weak hope that if I could only delay him, some might escape. I could feel the dark power of the man and I feared I would be no match for it. He smiled and a weapon appeared in his hand like none I had ever seen. It looked like a key.

"Agreed. And if I win, your heart will be mine." And the battle was joined.

I will not detail it. I can scarcely remember it as anything but a blur. Enough to know that I lost, and lost horribly. I suffered agonizing pain as my blood stained the sands, and I could taste the copper of it as I struggled to breathe. I was dying rapidly, but that was not enough for that evil man, and he knelt beside me, laying a hand on my chest.

I hated him. Hate had never been a large part of my life, but now I hated. The hate flared inside me like distilled poison, growing ever stronger as I heard the cries and screams of my friends, my people. Everything was going distant but my hate, and then the hate seemed to split from me. It was more painful than I can describe, the wrenching feeling of something that should never have been, and I felt the hatred becoming something other than myself. Becoming its' own entity. And the rest of me simply faded away.

Until it became the Nobody I am today. I am Marluxia now, and I will forget this soon. Perhaps it is just as well. I cannot bear to remember my oasis and the desert sands. Yet… I don't want it to be entirely forgotten. I don't want my people to be forgotten.

Keep this safe for me Namine.


End file.
